The typical petri dish used by clinicians, scientists and others to culture microorganisms or cells is a shallow polystyrene plastic lidded dish of varying dimensions. Petri dishes usually are sold in packages of twenty dishes, in which each dish is stacked directly on top of one another and surrounded by a plastic sleeve. An illustration of a prior art package of petri dishes contained in a plastic sleeve is shown in FIG. 1.
Current packaging of petri dishes as described above poses several disadvantages. First, if one or more of the petri dishes become contaminated or are defective in some way, visibility of such contamination or defect either is not possible, due to packages that are opaque or light impervious, and thus do not allow inspection by the user prior to use, or at best limited to only certain portions of each dish due to the stacking of the dishes directly on top of one another. Second, petri dishes in a plastic sleeve have a fair amount of mobility in the sleeve, thus allowing for slippage, resulting in an average breakage rate to one or more of the petri dishes of about 20%. Third, average shelf-life of a typical plastic sleeve of petri dishes is only about three months.
There exists a need, therefore, to provide an improved package for storing and shipping petri dishes which overcomes the disadvantages encountered with currently available packaged petri dishes.